My experience has been that gore tex shoes do a better job of keeping water in than out.

I should mention that my opinions apply to my area, so up to about 3 feet of snow and about 10 below 0F temp-wise.

This has been my experience, too. I've found that a good pair of medium-weight merino wool socks keep my feet warm, even if they get wet. And I'm a fan of YakTrax for everything but glare ice. If it's black ice conditions I hit the dreadmill or nowhere bike.

'16 Goals:

• Do some dus...and some CX...and some tandem gravel...and some podiums...

+1 to Zoom-zoom on the socks. If I have decent wooly socks on, it doesn't matter too much what the shoes are like, with one very annoying exception: I notice that a lot of lighter-weight, "minimal" shoes have cutouts in the soles for weight savings/flexibility/whatever. This is mildly bothersome in warm weather, when these holes eventually pick up pieces of gravel and make a clicking sound as you run until eventually it's aggravating enough that you stop, take off your shoes and dig the little rocks out w/a roadside stick.

In the winter, however, when running slushy icy roads, those holes serve to shoot pressurized ice-cold water up into your shoes from the bottom! This is a startling and really really unpleasant sensation. Wool socks won't handle this, at least not for me. Thus I have dedicated cold-weather shoes w/none of those little cutouts in the soles....